


Gray

by killuatrash (Epic_F_Awesomesauce)



Series: Dark magic [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dark Magic, Depression, Fluff, Harry is in love, M/M, also this is Rlly Rough so forgive me, also ummm that things where words r colors, but like lowkey fluff??, dark magic possession, harry is like possessed, im still working things out, its all a metaphor, ppl keep asking me for more dark magic and then i tried and this popped out, synesthesia? i think? idk, the gray is the dark magic tbh, this is gay btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7819735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epic_F_Awesomesauce/pseuds/killuatrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is gray.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gray

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dark Magic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6393673) by [killuatrash (Epic_F_Awesomesauce)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epic_F_Awesomesauce/pseuds/killuatrash). 



“Is it hard, working next to a convicted Death Eater every day?” asked the reporter. She had large blue eyes and mousy brown hair, and her hands were folded demurely in her lap. She spoke like it was something that Harry thought about often, the fact that Draco had been a Death Eater. As if Harry still had memories of the war.

“Not at all,” said Harry blankly. “I just think to myself, ‘Hey, that’s Draco Malfoy, a person and human being just like everyone else.’”

The reporter was silent for a moment, blinking, then flushed when she realized, presumably, what Harry was getting at. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No one means it like that,” said Harry, studying his nails. They were bitten down to the quick, and would have been painful, if he could feel that anymore. “But that’s how it ends up being. You don’t think he’s a person, because he was forced and coerced into a life of crime and terror as a kid. You’re determined to blame people who made mistakes, because you’re still hurt over the war. You don’t want it to end for him, because you think for some reason that you’re the only person who’s lost someone.”

The reporter gaped, shocked that Harry, of all people, would dare to say those things to her. “I don’t-”

“Who was it that you lost?” Harry looked up and met her eyes. They were dull. A dull blue. Everything was dull, now. He knew that at one point, things had held color, but not anymore. “A brother? A sister? A girlfriend, or mother, or child?”

“I didn’t-”

“I lost more people than I even knew I had,” said Harry. “And yet I’ve still managed to forgive children for things that aren’t their faults.”

“I wouldn’t-”

“The wizarding and muggle worlds both abolished the custom of handing a parent’s debts down to their child, and I think we should actually follow through with such a practice rather than pretend that we have, in theory, and then when it comes to actually following through, ignoring it.”

Her mouth opened and closed like blinking headlights. Harry stood up, brushing off his cowl-necked cloak as if he had been sitting in a dusty old attic rather than outside in a garden. Like the location made a difference to him anymore; the gray was still there no matter what, and it was impossible to get off.

“I’ll be taking my leave now.”

 

***

 

After the war, everything was gray.

Hermione thought that it was just the emotional toll of being forced to risk his life again and again for the sake of a people he barely knew for the last seven years, and he believed her. Ron said it was because of depression, because now all the deaths that he had witnessed had finally caught up to him, and he was feeling them all at once. Harry believed him, too. 

He took his NEWTs and got a job as an auror, no training needed. The aurors said that the gray was because he needed a new battle to fight, and sent him after the remaining Death Eaters that had escaped. Harry believed them, too, but after another year of fighting, the gray still didn’t go away.

Ron became an auror too, once he had helped George get back on his feet. Harry never got back with Ginny, and she went off to play quidditch. George thought the gray was because Fred was missing from the world. Harry didn’t think that was the cause of his gray, but probably of George’s. Ginny thought the gray was because he wasn’t flying enough. Maybe she was right, but Harry didn’t seem to have the energy for anything anymore.

He had nightmares, of slithering blackness and lingering threats, and darkness ready to suffocate. He dreamed of the cupboard, and of the thing under the chair in the Platform Nine and Three Quarters where he had met Dumbledore when he’d died, and he dreamed of the cave where he’d fed Dumbledore poison, and he dreamed of the cellar underneath Malfoy Mansion.

Mostly, he dreamed of a flash of green light, and his mother’s screams, and a high, cold laugh.

Draco Malfoy moved to France after the war, and came back three years later, a qualified Parisian auror. He forced himself into the British auror department, and there was nothing that anyone could do without insulting the French. Draco was smarter than most gave him credit for.

Draco thought the gray was depression, and that he should see a therapist. Draco thought everyone should see a therapist. He saw one back in France on a monthly basis, and said speaking to another, unbiased person about the series of events that had happened during the war was such a relief. He said that everyone should do it.

Most people ignored him.

Harry didn’t.

Draco wasn’t gray; he was white. He shone like a star, and his eyes were the silver of midnight on snow. Harry could watch him move for hours, the way the sun turned his hair golden. When Malfoy laughed, sometimes Harry saw other colors. It was wondrous; he wondered if this had been what it was like before the war.

He couldn’t remember anything before the war.

 

***

 

“I want to be your auror partner,” said Harry. He watched Draco’s head raise in surprise; the sun glinting through the window shone buttery on his face and neck, and Harry admired the hollows of his throat, the divots of his collarbones.

“Why would you want that?” Harry liked to watch Draco’s mouth move. He could watch Draco talk for hours and hours on end, just watching his mouth move (it was pink, and plump, like some sort of sweet) and feeling the vibrations of his voice. Sometimes Harry thought that if Draco spoke him to sleep, he wouldn’t ever have bad dreams.

“You know a lot about therapy,” said Harry. Draco liked therapy. He liked to talk about it. If it would get Draco talking, Harry would do anything.

“Yes, I suppose I do, but that doesn’t have anything to do with auror partners.” Draco regarded him with confusion, but not with coldness. He just looked. Sometimes, in certain lights, his eyes didn’t look gray. Sometimes they looked blue, like the sky before rain. Harry loved the dark ring around the outside of his iris. He didn’t know what it was when it came to the sky, but he loved it anyway.

“You could convince me to go,” said Harry. “Talk to me about therapy. I love to hear you talk.”

Draco looked shocked, and there was a pause, as if he expected Harry to take it back. Harry was silent, and so Draco eventually cleared his throat and began to speak.

Harry drifted off to sleep.

 

***

 

Harry stopped sleeping unless Draco was around. It was too hard. He hated the slithering things, the icky feeling that the blackness left, and the way the whimpering echoed through his head. He needed Draco’s voice to send him off to sleep. He only slept while they were together, and even then barely so.

He didn’t need sleep anymore, not really. He got dark shadows under his eyes, and he felt tired and lethargic, but there didn’t ever seem to be a breaking point. He never got so tired he couldn’t use magic, like Hermione sometimes when she got too busy and forgot to go to bed. He never just passed out, like Ron would if he didn’t get a full seven hours a day. He didn’t even get grouchy or snappish like Draco. He just kept going.

Sometimes, Harry thought he was still dead.

He barely ate, either, unless Draco made him. Which Draco did, very often, and he was ruthless about it. If Harry said he wasn’t hungry, Draco said he didn’t fucking care, and then he told him to eat or he’d fucking regret it. Harry didn’t like red. He didn’t like when Draco’s voice turned red like that. It reminded him of blood and pain, and so he ate.

Draco was yellow and pink and blue and green, when he laughed. Draco was a rainbow. He was purple when he slept, and Harry loved to watch him. He blushed such a lovely shade when Harry brushed fingers through his hair, and Harry did it often so that he could see it. Usually, Draco was the only color he could see.

 

***

 

“I’m sorry about the war,” Draco said. He was watching Harry. He did that often, now. It made him feel like he was glowing.

“I don’t remember it,” said Harry.

“Not at all?”

Harry shook his head, his hair falling into his eyes. He stared at it in shock.

“My hair is black,” he said.

“Had you forgotten?” asked Draco. He sounded careful, which was gray and blue, like his eyes.

“I had thought it would have gone gray by now.”

There was a pause. It was silent, and gray, and Draco didn’t speak. Harry couldn’t even hear him breathing.

“How old am I, Draco?”

Draco crossed the room in a couple of lengthy strides, then reached down and cupped Harry’s face in large hands. They felt yellow against his skin, and it was so warm. He felt like he could breathe. When Draco leaned down and kissed his forehead, it was like he could feel again, maybe for a moment; sparks flew in front of his eyes, dazzling him like the muggle fireworks he’d seen once when he was young. Dudley had shone him in his eyes and a spark had flown into the lenses of his glasses. He had cried, and then been locked away in his cupboard, and-

“I can remember,” he said in wonder, looking up at Draco. He looked around the room; it had light blue walls and hardwood floors of chestnut. There was a rug on the floor, made up of greens and yellows and reds. It was worn, but looked soft. There were two desks, and two cozy armchairs, one of which Harry was sitting in. There was a window, and he could see the setting sun, and there was a lamp in one corner that reflected the sun’s light (orange and pink and red and gold).

“What can you remember?” Draco asked softly. His voice was warm and pink, but bright like yellow, too.

“I can remember things when you’re around. Feel things, too, sometimes. Everything’s gray, but you bring me colors.”

“What can you remember?”

“I love the sound of your voice. It makes me so relaxed. It’s the only way I can sleep. I don’t feel safe when you’re not nearby. Everything is gray, and black and slithery, and you’re the only thing that can keep it away.”

“What can you remember?”

“You make me feel like a light’s been turned back on in my chest, and now that it’s on I can finally see again. Sometimes, when you’re around, not everything is gray. The walls in here are blue, did you know?”

Draco stepped away, and when his hands moved off of Harry, all the light in the room faded.

“What can you remember?” his voice was softer than ever.

Harry shook his head. It felt full of cotton balls, but not white ones. Gray. Everything was gray again.

“I don’t anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> every1 keeps asking for more dark magic n i was like "OK BITCH LETS TRY N WRITE SOME" n then this came out so???? ya im srry lmao. its not even edited i didn't even read thru it tell me if it makes sense lmao. maybe someday my ass will produce something good but not fucking today! (also i can only write at 3am)


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